Blood Trade

my heel, heading for the door. Somehow Misha reached it before me.

“Not outing you,” she stated. “Not going to say anything you don’t want said.”

I let a small smile pull up one side of my mouth. “Oh yeah? You gonna let me have the right to edit out anything I don’t like?” Misha’s face fell. “I figured not.” I reached around her for the doorknob.

“Okay,” she said. I stopped. “I’ll let you read over anything I write about you, and if it’s wrong or untruthful I’ll take it out.”

Which wasn’t a huge help. The truth was bad enough, and I wanted to keep the few secrets I had left to myself. But if I left the hotel room, even the right to take out the lies would be off the table. I was smart enough to know that much. Reach would tell her anything she wanted if the price was right. If I stayed, I might be able to bargain for my privacy and secrets. My fists clenched and opened as I hesitated. “What do you want from me?”

“I need an intro to Hieronymus here in Natchez and to Leo Pellissier in New Orleans. I’ve tried but they won’t talk to me. I need someone to give me that extra edge.”

I stepped back and stared at her, waiting, giving Misha a chance to make her case.

“My book deal is structured so I get the biggest payout on delivery of the manuscript. I need the money.”

“We all need something.”

She ignored my derision. “So far, all I have is a contact with a primo blood-servant of a minor clan here in Natchez, a human I talked to ten days ago named Bryson Ryder.” She was watching my face, and hers fell. “You’ve never heard of him?”

I shook my head. I didn’t remember that name from my quick perusal of the Natchez files, and the first thing I had looked at was clan names, their blood-master’s heirs, and primos to get a handle on Natchez’s organizational structure. “Clan name?” I asked.

“Clan Petitpas.”

I shook my head. There was no such clan, not among Natchez’s established houses. Misha turned her head away, letting that blond hair cover her face for a moment before lifting her eyes. “Bobby said you would help. He said to tell you that I need you.”

Bobby looked up at the sound of his name and I met his eyes across the room. The words I need you triggered a memory from our mutual pasts. Bobby Bates lying on a playground, beaten and bloody, the bullies having run off, one eye already blackening, his red hair mussed and filled with playground dirt. “I needed you, Jane,” he had whimpered. “And you came.”

Unlike when I had trailed Ann Shelton and her pals down to the gym, finding Bobby on the playground, being attacked by a small group of vicious boys, had been luck. If I hadn’t . . .

Bobby looked from me to Misha and back. And smiled.

“Okay.” I hadn’t expected to speak—I certainly hadn’t expected to agree to help Misha write a book—so I clarified, “I’ll tell you what I can that isn’t covered by the employee/employer relationship.” I walked back to my chair and picked up my teacup. “You do know I work for Leo, right?” She nodded, and I sipped. The tea was light and flavorful, delicate like the “flower” that had bloomed in the cup. And from out of nowhere I got an idea. Go me. “I’ll share, but I want it both ways. I’d like what info you already have on the local vamps.”

“Quid pro quo,” Misha said, her eyes dancing. “Fine. As long as you agree to not write a book on the subject.”

“Write a— Yeah, sure. Fine. Done. I’ll try to arrange intros. But if the vamps you want to talk to say no, then I have no control over that.”

“No ambushing them in alleyways and making them talk by threatening to break their fingers one by one?” She smiled, her blue eyes sparkling.

“No. None of that. They’d break me in two with one hand tied behind their backs. I want all this in writing.”

“I’ll have my lawyer send you something to protect your interests and privacy and give you the right to read the book before it goes to the editor. So let’s start there, with the Mithrans’ physical strengths. My sources tell me that the Naturaleza are harder to kill than regular vampires. Yes or no? And Jane. Thank you again.”

I didn’t try to stifle my sigh this time, remembering the feel of Lucas Vazquez de Allyon’s flesh trying to reknit and heal, even as my blade severed his head. “Yes.” I drank my delicate, flowery tea, feeling like an idiot. I had been played. I knew that. I just wasn’t sure how it had happened. “Definitely yes.”

•   •   •

My appointment with Misha and my trip down memory lane concluded, I was back in the SUV cab with Eli, the Kid on speaker phone while I instructed him to research Bryson Ryder. If the human wasn’t a primo of a known clan, then I wanted to know what he really was. It was dumb, but I felt responsible for Misha. “While you’re at it,” I suggested, “create us a listing of any properties owned by Big H’s clans.”

“Yeah, I’ll just snap my fingers and they’ll appear, collated in a file,” the Kid said, his tone full of snark. “I’m not Superman. You have no idea how impossible that last request is, do you?”

“Nope,” I said. “Don’t know, don’t care. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll buy you a cape and matching tights.” I hit END on the call.

Eli looked at me out of the corner of his eyes, a faint grin present in the crinkles of his eyes. “Cape and matching tights?”

“He’d be cute. We can call him Captain Nerdman.”

Eli actually chuckled, an evil little sound.

Back at Esmee’s, I changed into blue jeans and an old jacket over a T, weaponed up with nine mils, one in a spine sheath for left hand draw and its twin in a shoulder holster that put the weapon beside my left breast and under my left arm for right-hand draw, extra mags easy to hand, and blades in boot sheaths. I joined the boys in the breakfast room.

“Here’s what I have on the name Misha mentioned,” Alex said. “Bryson Ryder is human, married, a father of two, lives across the river in Vidalia, Louisiana, in a three-bedroom house. He works as a CPA and keeps a small office off Carter Street that advertises open hours in the daytime.”

“Misha said he was a primo blood-servant,” I said. They were usually well-off and lived on the vamp’s premises, where they were handy to do laundry or clean the pool or, in this case, do the books. And be available for sex and dinner, of course.

The Kid said, “He’s more likely a vamp’s occasional snack, and Misha was using him for background info. And before you ask, no, there’s no answer at his home or office.”

“We’ve got the time, and nothing else to do until eight. Let’s do a run-by,” Eli said, studying the addresses on satellite maps. “If the office and the house are empty, we can check them out and be back in plenty of time. If there are people there and it looks okay, then we’ve had a nice drive.”

By check them out, I knew Eli meant “break into and look around,” which sounded fine to me, except for any getting-caught-and-slapped-in-jail part. Our eight p.m. meeting was with Hieronymus, a meet and greet to sign contracts. Eight was just after breakfast time for a vamp, and we wanted to be armed and dangerous and ready for anything.

“And about that other thing,” the Kid continued. “Charly’s leukemia? I verified that she’s on chemo, on six different kinds of meds, including prophylactic antibiotics, some supplements to mitigate the effects of the round of chemo she finished last week, and one I can’t pronounce or find online.”

“Misha took her daughter away from home and on the road, on business, the day after she finished a round of chemo?” I asked, startled. “I am not happy with Mish. But I guess there’s some reason for what looks like total stupidity. I mean, okay, she has a book deal going, but surely any publisher would delay a deadline for a sick child.”

Eli said succinctly, “Deductible and twenty percent.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Insurance and medical bills were not things I had to worry about, not with my skinwalker metabolism and healing.

“She has her job as on-air personality at Torch News,” the Kid said, “and full benefits. But according to her financial records, Charly’s uncovered medical bills are already at twenty thousand dollars. I don’t know what she got for her book deal, but that’s a lot of dough.”

“Okay, Misha has to bring in large amounts of cash and fast,” I said. “But still. The day after a round of